Slashdot Mirror
An Interstellar Lifeboat for Humanity
cravey writes "From the people who brought you the Oceania project so many years ago comes the Lifeboat project. An attempt to create a spaceship for the purposes of saving the human race from the singularity predicted by Vernor Vinge. Lots of talk about nanotech accidents and biological accidents wiping out civilization, but it has a neat picture of the ship. :)"
telephone sanitizer joke here.
We have a slashdotting approaching at nine O'clock Fire the torpedoes Ay Cap.......
go somewhere else.
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
There was no lifeboat or amount of bandwidth that could save their server. God bless its smoldering soul.
If I would have to be shot into space in a lifeboat, it would have to be in a gigantic Bob's Big Boy.
now there's a thought. more of a long term
thing though...first we need to focus on more
immediate goals." - 12 Monkeys
We would need a Beowulf cluster of these to save humanity.
that their ship will be more robust than their website -- 3 minutes after this story was posted, they're /.'ed
I say we just offload all the extremists and morons onto Mars. We'll call it the "Get Off Of Our Planet" (GOOOP) project. That should help the longevity of the human race, although I can't speak for the "Mars colonists". :D
By not exploiting the fears of man. This is the kond of project that will get you some funding. Or at least collaborating with Ben & Jerry to make some better dried Icream flavors.
Remember the Neil Young song?
Well, I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships flying
In the yellow haze of the sun
There were children crying and colors flying
All around the chosen ones
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun
Flyin' mother nature's silver seed
To a new home in the sun
Oh fuck I just broke the DMCA. Sorry, Neil.
Seriously, this theme has been around in modern media. The genesis project from Star Trek, that crappy Don Bluth film, etc. In a lot of sci-fi's the earth is a dump and most people live elsewhere, like in Cowboy Bebop. Sci-fi's are often uncannily accurate at predicting the future.
Call me a crazy hippy, but in a lot of ways the Earth is a life form and we are like it's organs. If the meaning of life is to reproduce, then wouldn't terraforming and colonizing a new planet be the ultimate form of reproduction?
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
that this got posted the same day "create a new life" stirred up tons of flames? From all the flames posted on /. today on both sides of the argument, one might think humans really don't have a clue about anything.
I have a better name for it though... how about Titan After Earth? Yeah, that would be a cool name. Wait...
Do not read this sig.
Sounds like something straight outta "Forge of God". Either that or Eon. Come to think of it, Bear has some sort of fixation about the end of civilization and the rescuation (shaddap, it's a word, no, really) of a select handful of people...
Either that, or hope that when we go bye-bye, the next smart Earth race brings us back Jurassic Park style in hopes there's a storm and we escape our cages.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
1) Create Web page about your spaceship idea
2) Get your server Slashdotted and spend all your money recovering the data from the dead hard disks
3) Project Lifeboat comes to a screeching halt due to lack of funds
4) Die miserably on Earth
Oh the humanity! It wasn't supposed to happen like this. [fade out] Happen like this. [fade out] Happen like this...
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
If you liked Vernor Vinge's essay on
the Singularity as he conceives it
you should read (hell in my opinion you
should read all of his shit)
marooned in realtime.
Marooned in Realtime discusses extensively
the singularity from the other historical
side. Where people that didn't experience
try to figure out what actually happened
to the human race. When I finished it,
I immeadiately reread it, and I don't usually
do that.
... the Lifeboat project. An attempt to create a spaceship for the purposes of saving the human race from the singularity predicted by Vernor Vinge.
A good idea.
But if it's The Singularity they want to dodge it's probably a bit early to start. As The Singularity approaches the cost of such a venture will drop like a rock. (Of course, like buying a computer you have to stop waiting and plunk down cash SOME time. In this case, preferably before something breaks. B-) )
Now dodging other stuff (like an extinction-level event such as a comet-head impact) should not wait until the incoming comet is sighted.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Just a second... to save the race from the Singularity? The Singularity is a good thing. If you read Vinge's essay, or any of the other essays on the subject, you'll find that people look forward to this event and are actively trying to move the date forward. One fellow says that the definition of morally good is that which makes the Singularity happen sooner.
(There's a lot of interesting things at the Singularity Institute by the way.)
So either the poster is on crack, or ve represents a new and radically different perspective on the Singularity than I have ever seen in print. Which is it?
What would we do after we "evacuate" earth? Do we find a new planet to populate? I can't see anybody lasting long enough to get to a planet that is compatible with our biology.
I think their server needs a lifeboat... 29 comments in and it's slashdotted. :)
Mark
Look, meat puppets, you are PART OF THIS ECOSYSTEM, you are stuck here in the mud with the rest of us. You are never leaving this planet, at least for any appreciable length of time. Ever. So how about taking some of the energy you put into escapist fantasies and focus those gigantic brains of yours on improving what we've got, instead of running away from our problems, huh?
-Peterb
PS: That goes for you escapist religious freaks, also. Same disease, different symptoms.
Good idea, but this is about 500 years early. I don't think, even with an unlimited supply of money, humans could put a "station" into space, keep it in orbit longer then ~20 years, and have it GROW food to sustain an existing population, let alone new children. And also include a way to get back to Earth once the "disaster" is over. And somehow have enough energy for the needs of the crew, for many generations... etc etc. I think it would be easier to build a base on Mars -at least it's got something to build ON, and it's not going to crash back into Earth because they "ran out of fuel".
I found the following interview on SpaceNStuff.com and decided to mirror it here ('cause Slashdot can take a Slashdotting). August 31, 2002 posted on 08-31-2002 at 09:35PM by Nancy
... as a "matter of life and death."
... presents many obstacles. Even if no weapons would be allowed, terrorism could flourish in the Colonies, in other ways. Currently, rules and regulations prevail in civilizations here on Earth. Governments here have impossible tasks and in the United States, laws vary by state. How would this be handled within the colonies?
Summary: Interview Part 1
"The Lifeboat Foundation "
A matter of life and death.....
Full Story: Space N Stuff has recently learned of the existence of the above Foundation, as a result of a Guest who visited Space N Stuff and contacted me.
An email request was made and Mr. Eric Klien, Founder and President of Lifeboat Foundation , generously agreed to an interview. As a matter of fact, once Mr. Klien responded to the questions in this interview, I discovered this is like eating potato chips, you can't be satisfied with just "one". At a later date, Space N Stuff will again contact Mr. Klien for a follow-up to this initial query.
Please understand that this is a very complex subject and due to space constraints, not all of the details can be presented, however, we are providing LINKS at the bottom of this Interview so that you can check their site for yourselves.
In a nutshell, the purpose of Lifeboat Foundation is to research technology in a serious effort to build vehicles, or "Arks" that will house permanent residents, away from Earth. In essence, self-sustaining colonies would be established, one at a time, in an effort to save Humanity. Lifeboat Foundation 's basic concept of leaving Earth
This premise is a result of facts that cannot be denied. Human Beings are finding more and more ways to destroy the Earth, and......... each other.
Their goals are straight forward:
By 2004, they hope to educate the public as to 'coming dangers', promote efforts to preserve life, encourage advancement in Space Technology and fund SETI research.
By 2010, the efforts to develop self-sustaining technologies will be in full swing.
By 2018, complete the development above, launch a for-profit Corporation that would have as its primary goal , to put the first self-sustaining Space Colony in orbit, 248 miles above the Earth, and have subsequent colonies, further from Earth.
By 2020, to promote free enterprise in the conquest of Space.
Space N Stuff : Mr. Klien , your site provides a great deal of background information regarding your goals. However, I do have a series of questions to pose:
Space N Stuff : If I understand correctly, based on your current projections, people will not be off this planet until approximately 2020. In view of the seemingly endless strikes of Terrorism globally, will your "Arks" be too late?
Mr. Klien : It will be a close call.
In a technology timeline produced by British Telecommunications (a multibillion dollar conglomerate based in the United Kingdom) which we have a copy of at http://research.lifeboat.com/btexact.pdf, it was predicted that in as little as three more years terrorists will unleash dangerous bioweapons on the public. It stands to reason that creating self-sustaining space stations during the time between this prediction and total extinction will be a non trivial task.
Space N Stuff : It is my interpretation that each 'Ark' will be self-sufficient to accommodate 1,000 permanent residents and 500 visitors. In addition, those who are chosen will be the winner(s) of a lottery or benefit from "Lifeboat scholarships". While security is one of the top priorities for The United States, will that be a priority onboard an Ark? Will Lifeboat screen those who enter/win said lottery or scholarships? In other words, will criminals either present or future be included? If not? Would that be discrimination?
Mr. Klien : Needless to say, each passenger will undergo an intense screening process before being allowed to board. Someone like Martha Stewart, who may have done a little insider trading, would still be considered a potential candidate. But a convicted murderer would have little chance of being accepted as a candidate.
Space N Stuff : Human Nature, being just that, "human"
Mr. Klien : Each colony will be free to create its own laws and standards of conduct. Security officials will have the benefit of a confined station and its finite number of passengers when monitoring suspicious or malicious behavior. And, of course, the use of practical safeguards such as psychological testing will have to be in place for those onboard who have access to dangerous technologies.
Space N Stuff : On this planet, we have various means to cope with and handle death. Since these colonies have no capability of returning to Earth, how would deceased individuals be cared for?
Mr. Klien : Long term, we intend for the colonies to repopulate other planets-- including the Earth. As for those permanently living on spacestations, burial traditions would be unlikely. The departed could, in the fashion of a sailor's burial at sea, be ceremoniously launched into the sun. Simple cremation and cryonic suspension are additional possibilities. In all cases, memorials could also be created to both honor those who have passed and provide comfort to those who have lost loved ones.
Space N Stuff : Although the world has made significant progress with various Space Programs, we still find 'glitches' that delay progress, at great expense. How will Lifeboat be different in this regard? Since the colonies are forever 'out there' how will replacement parts be stored? It would seem to be quite difficult to predict in advance, how many of each, would be needed to keep the Arks functioning at tip top performance.
Mr. Klien : The development of self-sustaining technologies is essential to this project. We certainly don't want to replicate the Skylab and Mir experiences where they had to toss their junked space stations into the ocean.
To create effective self-sustaining technologies will require, at the very least, the primitive beginnings of nanotechnology. This technology, which enables the manipulation of matter, atom by atom, could be used to stop a ship's entropy. Also, whatever plagues, fallout or weaponry was used by terrorists to wipe out life on Earth could be removed by this technology, thereby making the planet habitable again.
For the record, while it will take hundreds of billions of dollars, if not more, to create nanotechnology, we will let others handle the cost. (Over a billion dollars was spent on nanotechnology development just this year.) We will just slightly adjust such technologies so they are useful to self-sustain a space station. And that is what we will spend ten years doing.
Space N Stuff : For the first time since Man has walked on Earth, scientists and engineers are capable of mind boggling research and results. Yet, our Universe is constantly changing. Solar storms are perhaps altering many of our 'normal' weather patterns. Discoveries are being made faster than the press can report. Wouldn't it be difficult to plan now, with so many unknowns?
Mr. Klien : It is always difficult to make plans based on educated guesses, but no plan to preserve mankind seems premature when you consider the consequences. Stephen Hawking warns that "You can't regulate every lab in the world. The danger is that either by accident or design, we create a virus that destroys us." With this in mind, can we afford to wait? Can we afford not to make plans?
Space N Stuff : Finally Mr. Klien , mankind survives in 'groups.' Families, friendships, coworkers. Would Colonies provide employment? How would normal everyday expenses be handled? Would entire families qualify to climb onboard at the same time? Those who find living in space, is NOT their 'cup of tea' will face great stress, since it appears they will not be able to return, assuming there is a planet here still in existence. Can you elaborate?
Mr. Klien : The more arks we are able to build, the more room will be available to house entire families. And considering that only a few thousand people will be in such close proximity onboard the station, meaningful bonds will be forged, new families will spring up and, with time, a sense of community will grow strong.
As to employment, consumerism will not die alongside our planet. There will still be financial reward for services rendered. A new frontier offers new opportunity. Everyone will be encouraged to stimulate creativity and to provide the goods, services and entertainment needed for the station to flourish.
Comments: Mr. Klien ? Feel free to add whatever you wish.
Mr. Klien : The idea that advanced technologies are not an appropriate match for our primitive culture is an obvious one, but it wasn't until recently that I figured out why few people are worrying about it. The answer is that non-scientists are oblivious to potential dangers, while on the other hand, those who worship at the altar of science live by the precept that future advancements will cure all the world's problems.
We are currently working on phase 4, the technical credibility, of our ARK I design and, in two weeks, I will be flying off to England to meet with a multibillionaire. Within a year or two, we expect our project to really gain some momentum!
Space N Stuff wishes to extend its sincere gratitude to Mr. Klien for his timely response and the use of his valuable time. In the near future, we will pursue additional information in the form of a follow-up interview.
In the meantime Mr. Klien , have a safe journey to England and back.
Nancy, Director of Operations, Editor
www.spacenstuff.com
RESOURCES:
Below you will find various LINKS within Lifeboat Foundation 's web site. It is very easy to navigate. We hope you will visit and see the details for yourself. Thank you.
http://lifeboat.com/ex/ : Home Page
http://lifeboat.com/ex/ArkI : Details on Ark I
http://lifeboat.com/ex/timeline : Current and Future Goals.
http://lifeboat.com/ex/faq : Frequently Asked Questions
http://research.lifeboat.com/btexact.pdf : Research
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
that'd sell a lot more seats!
--- Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit? | Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?
Am I the only one that thought "CULT!" when I read the title, and even moreso after reading the article? I mean, how often is this the staple of a cult? Well, suicide aside...
Danish != nationality
It's frustrating that /. posts this sort of thing, but never touches on serious stuff dealing with the Singularity. Bah to the moderators.
For example, the Singularity Institute has a vast array of comp-sci-related interesting stuff about General Artifical Intelligence and its role in the Singularity. The institute and volunteers are working on Flare, a programming language for GAI development.
Then we have the Foresight Institute who have a bunch of scholarly, serious things to say about nanotechnology and its implications.
Just for starters, of course. Then we have a million other resources out there, such as:
KurzweilAI.net
Extropy Institute
at which one can learn about the Singularity and associated topics in context.
But no, we get trash like the spaceship guy. Bah, bah, bah. Reason
The sites are /.ed, but after reading the intro, it all sounds like those Heaven's Gate people... they didn't need a real spaceship in 1996 when they all took off on the Hale-Bopp comet.
Why not build a lifeboat for the ISS?
i saw once, was to show that it is indeed impossible to save the entire human population. basically, the amount of people we can take off the planet every day is nowhere near the level of population growth. so, even if you can get a few million off the planet, 99% of the people currently on earth will be still living on earth, and any large scale disaster will still wipe out almost the entire human race if we do not prevent it. sure, maybe the human race itself will survive, but it will most likely not be sufficient to maintain itself, and will just die out anyway.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
"Lots of talk about nanotech accidents and biological accidents wiping out civilization"
It is "civilization" that created these threats and now the threats might destroy "civilization"...The Irony....
Completely off topic I just hope none of the Back Street Boys or 'NSYNC are on the same Space Ship I am on.
The difference between cult and respectable religions are just the size of membership. Example: Eating the body of Christ, handed to you by a priest! Imagine the reaction if someone came up with this POS today. Doesn't get more "Cult'ish" than that.
Just because your are not paranoid doesn't mean your are not being followed!
Danish by Nationality not by Name by the way.
Help fight continental drift.
Ok, these are the same people that wanted to make an artificial island so that they could have their own country--see link attached to article. Well, according to that same page, they've abandoned that project. Now, one could argue that they changed their plans because of this "Singularity" business. More likely, they didn't get the funds. Let's do a little match, shall we? If you can't raise enough dough to make an island, what makes you think you can raise enough dough to build a spaceship ark? And given the recent "success" of Armadillo Aerospace, I'd be a little hesitant to fund a private space program, especially with live people on board.
Site is /.ed, but I doubt they can fit all 6 billion members of humanity. Who will be dealing with the extraordinarily difficult task of deciding who goes on, and by what standards?
Reminds me of the movie "Deep Impact" where they had to decide who went into the underground bunkers to live out the asteroid impact, and how these decisions split families, etc in two.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
The Biomass is littered with dead critters who developed overspecialized means of monopolizing their ecological niche and paid the ultimate price of extincition through success. We have only to point to Bill Gates and MicroSoft to see our doom approaching. Our outsized brains have allowed us to dominate the biosphere and promulgate changes evolution might well blush at.The biomass is a system and as such functions by way of principles we refer to as feedback, both positive and negative, and runaway. Sex and death are excellent, at hand ;), examples of positive feedback. While we're busy skirting death and overbreeding nature is being pushed up against the limits of existing tolerances and sooner or later, you know, something's got to give. When the shifts in parameters start to take place no one can say what the outcome will be. We might come out in Eden, we might come out in Hell and suffer the damnation of Faust, or just die out. Either way it's the big brain and our unbridled fears and hubris that will get us there. That having been said, I'm off to quaff a beer and a handful of anti-depressants. This short interlude of anthropomorphizing was brought to atop my own brand of soapbox fashioned after the rhetorical positions of K Galbraith and W. Churchill who repsectively stated: "I right because I'm taller than you" and "These, Gentlemen, are the opinions upon which I base my facts."
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
First, a brief recap. "The Singularity" is a paper by Vernor Vinge which makes an observation. The author noted that the rate of change is in fact accelerating exponentially. He predicted that rather dramatic consequences will result when change reaches the vertical part of the exponential curve, rounding the bend per say. Humans simply will not be able to keep up with things or have any influence whatsoever as new life with greatly improved intelligence goes on to dominate the planet and then the reachable universe. This observation is quite well supported by other evidence. Current obstacles : human stubborness and delusions of their own grandeur, relative technological difficulty, human delusion of some mystical secret "soul" to prevent such a thing will be cleared away by one means or another. I say 'will' because trying to stop something like this would be like a group of humans deciding to end their expansion by refusing to reproduce. Someone else would, and dominate the future. Remember, the improved intelligent life, whatever form they take, will be in reality humanity's children. Random evolution won't bring it about : creating better intelligence will require a vast organized effort, whether it be designing circuitry or modifying the genetics of existing people. The new life, whether it be a baby with special genes or a learning machine that must be taught from the basics onward will require the same parenting process the current people alive must give to their children to carry on the legacy. Unlike the popular view, I see this as a positive step. Yes, biological humans will probably die away eventually...but this need not be a violent process, or any more cruel than the deaths of current humans by their own bodies. The solar system and the galaxy belong to these descendents, as it should be.
Because it seems to be just as natural.
;-)
Its been that way throughout human history (throughout life's history?) -- when things got too crowded, too violent, too oppressive, too competitive, too boring, etc. some (usually the very rich and the very poor) moved on to look for new places with better opportunities.
And in general, it seems to pay off -- intelligence, and skill don't make people successful, getting there first with lots of friends does. It just makes sense, the competition is less, so what's needed for success is less.
But just like bacteria in a pitri dish, when we run out of room, we will die off. Sure there's too many people, but who's gonna volunteer to fall on the sword first? You? Stop breeding? You? For everyone who says "yes" all you will have done is take yourself out of the running, life doesn't seem to favor the self-eliminating.
But nature has the answer: We call them War, Famine, Pestilence, and Natural Causes. We still fear them as much as we ever did. There's a reason we call them the four horsemen of the apocolypse: Because they are nature's answer to "surplus inventory." There's also a reason why "celibacy" and "suicide" aren't included -- they don't have what it takes for mass population control -- if they did, nature would have promoted them by now.
So while your advice might be the rational answer, it doesn't seem to be the instinctive one, and whether we want to admit it or not, instinct and habit drive us much more than reason.
"A person is smart, people are dumb, panicy dangerous animals, and you know it." -- MIB
We've known it ever since we became self-aware. And its the arrogance of our self-awareness that makes us think we can change any of it.
So, go ahead change it I mean the question is so simple: "How does one change life into something its not?" We already know the answer -- its what we spend our "lives" trying to avoid.
We are agents of the free
All of those people waiting on SETI@home to find something intresting will finally be able to pick up an intelligent lifeform signal.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Exponential progress is a fact, and we're currently on the knee of that tech curve, but it's simply too hard for many people to accept how fast things are going to change in the near future, since our minds like to extrapolate linearly and futilely resist change...
It's easy to be cynical about the future though, after all, "where's my flying car dammit?!" is a free pass to make fun of any wild prediction, because of famous bad ones.
--
Power to the Peaceful
But can they save their servers?
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
The possible flaw is that by the time they get the technology necessary to live in space sustainably long-term, mature nanotechnology will be available. So at best, they will have a few short years in which to get ahead start. But more importantly, the speed in which they will be able to travel will more than likely be substantially less than c. And once the singularity happens all bets are off, but chances are nanobot probes will be heading off in all directions at close to the speed of light, which means their ship will more than likely get infected, unless this singularity is benign. But if it is Benign, then there is no reason for their escape in the first place. I do wish them the best of luck.
Planet P - Liberation with Technology.
www.enthea.org
(No sense of humor? It's a joke. I'm kidding. The first two sentences are actually in the letter. I added the rest, because it's funny. Ha-ha.)
I write in my journal
Whats the secret trick to get my laptop above 1024x768?
It's easy. Just click here and the press the green button.
I write in my journal
Okay, I apologize in advance if this is ill-informed (the site was already slashdotted), or redundant by the time I post this, but say for the sake of argument that we have a lifeboat. Where are we going to go with it? Are we to assume we've already terraformed countless other planets with suns similar to our own?
moto411.com
I don't know who said that first, but I read it here on Slashdot.
I like Vinge's fiction, but the Singularity thing strikes me as an apocalyptic/transcendent/eschatological scenario for people who can't stomach the Book of Revelation.
Face it: the real underpinnings of the "Singularity" are not any kind of hard science, but human yearning for redemption and transformation. All this talk about the growth of AI is a joke -- in fact most of the field of AI is a joke, since no one can even define what natural intelligence is, much less the artificial kind. And technological trends like Moore's Law are not in any way bound to continue, yet geeks treat them like scientifically proven laws of nature, and then extrapolate the emergence of an Ubermind.
The impulses behind religion -- a desire for collective change and a future utopia -- need not be manifested in traditionally religious ways. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, ostensibly anti- or non-religious people believed in a faith called Marxism, that promised an all-cleansing revolution and a workers' paradise. The "Singularity" nuts are just the latest iteration of this.
There's a term for the movement of people who want to cyborgize themselves, which escapes me at the moment (exomorphs? something like that). But I imagine there's a lot of overlap between them and the "Singularists."
Look, meat puppets, you are PART OF THIS ECOSYSTEM, you are stuck here in the mud with the rest of us.
Bull! We currently have the technology (assuming big bucks) to send multi-generational colonies to other star systems. Are you saying some "ancient spirit" will reach out and grab our asses back to Earth if we try? Been smokin' too much hemp perhaps.
Given what I call the "Moores Law of Terrorism" [1], eventually it will be possible to for a small group of people to wipe out the entire human species (via nukes, biokillers, nanokillers, etc.)
Why risk that when we can save at least *some* of our asses so that humans as a species survive rather than allow all 100% to die. (Note: It probably will not be me in the tin can.)
[1] The number of people who a small group of terrorists can kill doubles every X years.
Table-ized A.I.
The new Power had no weapons on the ground, nothing but a comm laser. That could not even melt steel at the frigate's range. No matter, the laser was aimed, civilly on the retreating warship's receiver. No acknowledgment. The humans knew what communication would bring. The laser light flickered here and there across the hull, lighting smoothness and inactive sensors, sliding across the ship's ultradrive spines. Searching probing. The Power had never bothered to sabotage the external hull, but that was no problem. Even this crude machine had thousands of robot sensors scattered across its surface, reporting status and danger, driving utility programs. Most were shut down now, the ship fleeing nearly blind. They thought by not looking that they could be safe. ... a backdoor into the ship's code, installed when the newborn had subverted the humans' groundside equipment....
One more second and the frigate would attain interstellar saftey.
The laser flickered on a failure sensor, a sensor that reported critical changes in one of the ultradrive spines. Its interrupts could not be ignored if the star jump were to succeed. Interrupt honored. Interrupt handler running, looking out, receiving more light from the laser far below
...and the Power was aboard, with milliseconds to spare. Its agents -- not even human equivalent on this primitive hardware -- raced through the ship's automation, shutting down, aborting. There would be no jump. Cameras in the ship's bridge showed widening of eyes, the beginning of a scream. The humans knew, to the extent that horror can live in a fraction of a second.
How do they know the singularity society won't go after them?
-- RTFM:Slackware::Beer:Saturday
More to the point of the article, we can probably establish settlements like this now, with current level of technology. Then in future a space settlement will only need to get in space and deal with problems unique to being there. Other problems that a domed settlement on Mars might face - creating a self-sustained biosphere, making repairs using only material inside and so on - will already be solved on Earth.
You misunderstand the singularity. It doesn't have to come about because of AI. It can also come about because of human augmentation with computers, let me give you some examples.
A smart person connected to the internet can research a problem faster than one in a library. As the software for research on the net gets better and better more research can be done. Hence better software and hardware can be made and people can study previous research.
This doesn't mean we will increase forever but that at the current rate we are increasing exponentially. Also the singularity is not judgment day. Some people see it that way because they don't understand. We will not be enslaved or lose our souls any more than we do so today.
-- RTFM:Slackware::Beer:Saturday
Not much, unless the design deliberately called for it to be under tension. The things are in orbit, after all. Some designs call for the `tower' base to be mobile (a ship). It's not really a tower, it's really a bridge anchored on nothing (from the middle out).
Breaking it in the middle would be a bit more disastrous. The bottom half would whiplash around the planet (or maybe the bottom tenth, quite a lot would burn up and/or shatter as it re-entered), and what happened to the other half would be highly dependednt on stuff like where the Moon was at the time.
Terrorist attacks would not be easy to carry off; the elevator would be a very thin low-visibility target to hit, and air defense would be relatively simple. Some quite small computer-co-ordinated guns on the travellers would prove quite lethal to aircraft and missiles alike, and I imagine that provision would be made for directing and focussing the lift laser against larger and/or slower targets. The designs that I've seen would be immune to meteor strikes up to quite sizeable impacts (they're curved - like a tape measure - so even a side-on strike would get at most half of the fibres).
Terrorist attacks against space colonies would be much more of a problem. From orbit, a rocket the size of two soft-drink cans could loft a couple of kilos of small ball-bearings into a widely dispersed cloud on a collision course with a colony. This would be very difficult to even detect, let alone parry or dodge.
Terrorist attacks on ground targets from orbit would also be a worry. `We have many rocks, Man.'
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Gigantic brains improving what we've got is what brings the Singularity on!
I've seen that space station before-in Space: 1999. If the producers choose to sue, then the damn blueprints will be illegal to reproduce or distribute and we'll be stuck on this dumb rock forever. Another reason to hate the DMCA...
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
Lemme get my tinfoil hat and sign me up!
/. starts paying more attention to them black helicopters soon!
a ck."
Hooboy I hope that
"Dale, where in the hell did you hear that?"
"Alt-dot-conspiracy-dot-helicopter-dot-bl
- I am made of meat.
I was an active member of Oceania, and still believe in the principles... However, I am not so sure about joining any project run by Eric. Though he seemed like a nice guy, he flaked off without telling anyone what was happening or where their money was going.
I love this quote, in relation to the fact he hasn't replied to anything Oceania in YEARS:
"Eric Klien, founder of Colossus, Inc., a web hosting company since 1995 and founder of The Atlantis Project, an ambition made obsolete by current events."
He may be on the up-and-up, but from past experience with Oceania, I have to personally assume that it is a scam.
Malachi
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
I don't know if this was already pointed out, but the author seems to be slightly unifomed about the properties of a vacuum. Since NASA has stated it would take 10-20 years at THEIR current level of funding to put a man on the moon again (let alone colonise), I wonder how the lifeboat will be ready in less than 18 years.
Ah well, the quote from the lifeboat FAQ (main, not supplimentary) shows what I am talking about (emphasis mine).
Why not hide in a deep sea colony?
This would have all the disadvantages of a bunker/cave.
Also, the one single atmosphere of pressure in outer space seems inconsequential compared to the hundreds of atmospheres of pressure under the sea.
The predictions of Eric sound similar to another organisation... your favourite door-to-door salespeople. (And the History of the end of the world). Found on Google.
A Sig should be like my friend Maran, short.
... but some of the comments here do seem to be working on that assumption. From the site: "Our main goal is to get enough of the human race off the planet, as soon as possible, to ensure the future of mankind in case of overwhelming disaster."
There doesn't need to be a Singularity Point in order for this to be a good idea, people. Does it slip our minds that we already farking have the power to Nuke Ourselves Back into the Stone Age(tm), and even if progress has stopped accellerating as of 3am last night, (Any bets?) things are still set to get a lot more dangerous before they stabilise.
Seems to me that making a few colony vessels as an insurance policy against the Earth's possible suicide (You're asleep at the wheel if you think it can't happen) as soon as feasable is a sensible and prudent step to take. Provided, of course, that we also continue our efforts here on Earth to keep intelligence and information tech up to speed with our power and weapons capabilities.
Incidentally, do this societies goals remind anyone else of Iain Banks' SF background essay, "A Few Notes on the Culture"?
I believe in many ways we already have "missed" the boat.
I think Arthur C Clark put it best when asked about the most amazing development of the 20th century was that "We went to the moon, and then, stopped."
No real progress has been made since then, except we have had better hardware to reach earth orbit.
(More powerful rockets and robtics...whoop to do to day, yippy skippy.)
Rocket technology sucks. The whole concept stinks, in my humble opinion. So does Solar sails, that stinks as well. These stupid and dumb propositions to push physical objects around in space are just as quaint as the 300-400 year old laws that describe how to do it. (Newtons laws.)
Not GOOD ENOUGH though for an ark.
Those crucial 30-40 years that we sat on our laurels I believe represented a critical time window when, the world had enough resources, and was stable enough to continue invest HEAVILY in space research, without polticians and short cited people to notice.
Now, it is far too expensive, our governments are basically corrupt, and way too many people are overly concerned about how much consumerism they can accomplish in one lifetime, to worry about the future beyond 1 hour of thier lives.
We basically lost 30 years since the time of Apollo, and we will pay dearly for it as small bands of humans, seek to destroy civilization, even at the cost of thier own lives for thier impident God they worship.
The kinds and sorts of technology required for long term duration in space, is something we don't posses, nor will we I do believe for another 100-300 years. Space is just too hazardous, radiation wise, relativistically wise, that an Ark launched with todays technology could become easily sterile before it even leaves the solar system.
I think I also believe that we are on a cycle. We have just too many "fairy tales" of past civilizations describing "Gods in the Sky" that would travel around the world, to discount that perhaps, we have already been here, or near to here, in our development.
Then inexplicably, EVERYTHING gets wiped out, and those that survive, tell thier children about the time when we could fly, when people could be "raised from the dead" and that wars were fought using "Great Rays from the Sun".
No, no ark will save us, because the window of opportunity has passed us by. We have proven our selves as a species that we lack the will to continue and all our eggs will be in this one basket till someone drops the basket.
The only way to stop the cycle, is for our species to completely die off, not such a TERRIBLY bad thing considering our most recent accomplishments at building ever greater ways of destroying the planet at the push of a button. Or, perhaps next time around, we will get a little further, perhaps going to the moon, a half a million years from now and actually building a base below its surface.
OR perhaps we HAVE come this far before, and even further, but failed last time as well...
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
We will be saved from the Singularity when
all the Unix sytems fail in 2036
Do not underestimate the power of the Dark side
It won't be a problem for 64-bit and up UNIX systems. It also won't be a problem for 32 bit Unices that do something different about time_t. That's not to say there won't be a brief bonanza of highly paid work for crusty Linux, BSD and Solaris hackers right about then.
OK, Now I've seen everything.
It's Wagontrain to the stars. All they need is big solar sail off one side and it's ready to roll..., I mean sail.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Put trees in that thing, and you would have the movie, Silent Running with Bruce Dern. Anyone remember that one?
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
So do they plan on making everyone watch really bad movies on this trip?
-- Jim
In his story, a base was set up on the moon to awaite the destruction of earth (by asteriod or other disaster). Once the disaster happened (in their case, asteroid), the moon base would "wake up", create clones of people, raise them and educate them, then they would return to earth to rebuild. It's not the greatest read, but it is an interesting concept.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
I think they've been watching too much Lexx .. In season 2 Mantrid creates these robot arms that self replicate by destroying planets to make even more flying arms.. By the end of the season the entire Light Universe is devoured and Lexx & Crew have a final showdown. I guess it's kinda like the Borg too, in a way. Great season, you can pick it up on DVD.
Basically the US consists of all the morons and extremeists and religious fanatics that where kicked out of europe the last 300 years. And their offspring.
And now they sort of 'rule the world' and call that wild patch of land 'Gods own country'.
Talk about irony.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Who is this guy?
It is quite obvious he is running these 'foundations' as personal $ sinks...
does anyone know how to get the financial details of his former foundation and this current foundation? id be very interested to know what he does with the money he recieves as memberships and donations.
Just a second... to save the race from the Singularity? The Singularity is a good thing. If you read Vinge's essay, or any of the other essays on the subject, you'll find that people look forward to this event and are actively trying to move the date forward. One fellow says that the definition of morally good is that which makes the Singularity happen sooner.
... it simply, gradually and incrementally, sees what is beyond the horizon and eventually goes there, seeing and experiencing what we who have not gone there cannot.
... running an operating system and distribution (Gentoo) which has upgraded packages available every single day. I can get up each morning, to an 'emerge rsync ; emerge -up world ; emerge -u world' and perform the kind of software upgrades, each and every day, that used to happen once every couple of years, then once every few months, now, perhaps, for those who think they're really leading edge in the proprietary world, every few weeks. I do it every day, and I'm sure a time will come when one could do such every hour, every minute, every second, and, someday, probably every microsecond.
... and this sort of fearmongering by luddites such as Bill Joy (yes, I know how me made his fortune ... but remember, those who made yesterdays technologies are often the worst luddites against tommorow's) is both disingenuous and destructive to our society, our culture, and our quest for knowledge.
The singularity is neither good nor bad, merely unpredictable. That having been said, I don't believe there is or ever will be a Vinge style singularity.
Or, put another way, we've been through a dozen singuarlities already. Do you think the future as it played out among the ancient Egyptians was comprehensible, imaginable to the hunter-gatherers five thousand years earlier? Was human flight (with anything other than angel's wings) imaginable to the 9th century serfs in [insert your favorite Christian Country here]? And while Jules Verne was able to imagine submarines and rockets, certainly computers, much less the virtual, digital lives we lead on them, were incomprehensible not only to him, but to our own parents a scant thirty years ago.
Was there any magical, discontinuity that happened as a result?
No, because there is no singularity, there never was a singularity, and there never will be a singularity. An airplane or a ship doesn't suddenly drop off the edge of the earth or experience some other weird discontinuity merely because it flies or sales over the horizon
So too with the so-called technological singularity. It is merely a horizon beyond which we cannot see from our current vantage point. When we reach this horizon (and cross it) there won't be some sudden, miraculous (or disasterous) break, there will simply be yet another incremental, continuious change in our technology and its impact on our lives.
I live farther up the exponential curve of human knowledge and technology than most
So what? When that time comes, our ability to grasp and keep up with these changes, via tools (such as portage) or enhancements to our own minds, or what have you, will keep pace. The changes will come ever faster, but they will remain incremental, continuous changes, not dramatic, sudden, event-horizon style discontinuities or big technological division-by-zeros that the messianic and hysterical alike imagine.
The mere fact that many of these changes are beyond our current technological horizon, are beyond our current imagination and ability to concieve, doesn't make them in any way mysterious, miraculous, dangerous, or magical
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The goldern path is the idea that if you limit humanity to a closed system at least one path will lead to extinction. For instance if you take a long view of histroy we can safely say the humanity will go extinct... when the sun burns up Earth. Not much of a worry really but we can say it with absolut certanty. From this absolute we can argue the specifics.
We have to get off this fucking rock. We should honestly have no greater priority, except maybe not doing ireperable harm before we go.
Somehow the lifeboat seems um... a little small and isolated. I want the Niven's Ringworld / Bank's Culture Orbitals. No Halo Please I don't want the people who thought up Durandal making my habitat. I want billions of people per habitat. The only way to do that is spheres, nano or biological manufacturing, and a large source or raw materials. That and some balls. Oh yeah and a SHIT load of money.
-F34nor
Unfortunately, Eric Klien has somewhat of a reputation amongst those of us who have been (sort of) following Oceania as a bit of a crook. Some of us have been trying to keep the goals and the idea behind the Atlantis Project alive via a Yahoogroups mailing list called fountainhead-l. The Free State Project also has some great ideas.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Something like the picture in close orbit and supplied by the earth is still a part of the ecosystem and far more vulnerable than a terrestrial installation built with a similar investment.
Making a fund for preservation of the species is a great idea though. Primarily it could be used to provide a "safety buffer" by recognizing the need for specific research and quickly funding it.
Ultimately we need vibrant colonies on other planets (presumably around other stars and not in contact with Earth) to be safe. It might be very difficult to guarantee the "not in contact with Earth" part, but at least a planet-killer meteor impact would no longer be a total loss.
It would be much better to take the money and invest in some targetted areas.
It is VERY CLEAR that a possible answer to the "where are all the radio signals from other civilizations" question is, "most of them killed themselves in a science accident soon after getting to the point where sending signals became economic".
I would off-hand humbly suggest investing in: :(
-Nanotechnology Research and related Safety Technology (defensive, maybe it will be possible to make mistakes in a safe environment before others in nonsafe environments).
-Astronomy and Astrophysics, in particular development of extremely high-power interferometers (to gain clues as to what distant catastrophes looked like).
-SETI, most bang for your buck and we might get a clue before killing ourselves off.
-Space construction research, not for colonies in space but for high energy research.(iffy, they'll probably build on Earth where the physicists are anyway).
-Risk Assessment and related research in biochemistry, nanotechnology, and particle physics. (Of course it is probably difficult to direct research just at risk assessment but at least to fund researchers so that it is something they spend brainpower on regularly).
-International collaborative research funding and coordination. Basically if all countries could be aligned then there might be less possibility of the defeatist "if we don't study it someone else will".
-Powerful, pragmatic projects to eliminate poverty, hunger, water shortages, and racial hate.
-Risk management programs in AI. Needed in the next 30 years apparently (cf. Kurzweil).
-Stabilization of world politics and maybe even the "War on Terrorism". Don't laugh but I expected this for years. Of course having thousands of people killed is a big impetus but I don't think that is the main reason behind the U.S. administration's actions.
Basically the world cannot afford "rogue states" or "terrorist cells" which as the years go by will gain progressively scarier weapons. War is perhaps not the answer and already I worry that centuries more of hatred could have been instilled in the middle east, but the fact is you just don't want pathological people to be in control of the real heavy shit. Of course we are a few definitions shy here still.. "what's 'pathological'?"
Still I cannot help but think about some scifi stories, which after all are exercises in imagination and extrapolation. Often a powerful, sneaky alien ship will land on the planet Earth and stop all war, disease, etc. with some strong arm tactics. (sorry can't think of which one now). I'm not advocating such tactics but if you think objectively, as if you were in the ET's place, how would you solve some of the problems you see? You could just let people fight over water, let them die if they have not enough food, create the food and water, or relocate populations. Some things might be solved by giving the UN a set of huge teeth and some imaginitive people. It seems that if the top ten or twenty countries (in money, prestige, population, or whatever) agree they can do most anything. They just never agree very much. So we need money to get researchers to work on how to align many countries on a certain issue. Think about WWII and how Japan was transformed overnight. Why do people think this can't happen in other countries? (No, it doesn't take a bomb!). Groupware and coordinated media might work to feed the same information to the entire world and get everyone literally on the same wavelength. It's just a little bitty world 8000 miles wide, folks!
Hope we make it. I wouldn't mind living forever..
Lot's of pontificating and harumphing. Nothing more than a fun way to pass the time.
**>>BELCH
The problem is, to really understand his point you need to read it together with the "Peace War", and that's been out of print for ages.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The Small-Minded Demons of Impotence...
Wow!
**>>BELCH
...This is a silly idea.
**>>BELCH
The Shover Robot will protect me from the Terrible Secret of Space.
- - - -
The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
Presumably if all turns out for the best, the people on the lifeboat can join in afterwards. They don't need to be cut off totally from the rest of humanity, they just need to have a big enough buffer to control what enters their enviroment.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
If bad shit starts going down, then I'll try to hitch-hike on a UFO. You just have to get used to daily anal probings. It is kinda like jail, which is better than death......I think.
Table-ized A.I.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Not true, but the further from the equator you get, the more, er, interesting the engineering problems get. You could have, for example, a spiral-shaped elevator tethered in London, but it would be much longer and subject to larger forces (read, orders of magnitude harder to build) than an equatorial one.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I've seen a proposal for an elevator on Mars that was carefully oscillated to avoid the regular passage of an inconvenient moon.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
`Highly eclectic' would be more accurate. Pratchett, O'Niell, Dawkins and Baumgardner all on the same day. Not counting my Larsen deck calendar. (-:
I wonder why anyone would bother to mod you down at all, let alone two points?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You couldn't indulge in a great deal of shortening by supporting the thing from below. You would increase the tension along much of its length, requiring it to be thicker there. OTOH having it under tension may be a useful safety feature (the upper lengths would tend to head skyward rather than practicing S&M on the planet if the elecator snapped).
You could shorten it a lot by nailing a sizeable asteroid to the other end (just beyond geosync), but that has a few technical hazards of its own (e.g. wouldn't want to be on the Moon if it came loose - billiards, anyone?). If you found and refined the carbon (or anything else) in space, that might be useful employment for the slag.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
They were actually proposed for the Stanford Torus particularly for cosmic ray shielding, but the side-effects and added difficulty in docking etc with an object charged up to a bazillion volts made them impractical.
Even so, if I were attacking one I'd give my two-can rocket a slight opposing charge, and dispense with anything reminiscent of a guidance system.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing